Bozeman -- A team of five students from the Montana State University College of Business won $1,500 and first place in the PricewaterhouseCoopers xTAX (for extreme tax) regional competition recently.

The winning MSU team included: Melinda Monroe, a sophomore accounting student from Livingston; Jim Fulkerson, a sophomore accounting student from Kent, Wash.; Alicia Rockwood, a junior majoring in accounting from Ennis; Stephanie Jacquier, a freshman exchange student from France; and Jason Grass, a graduate student in accounting from Missoula.

The national accounting firm says its xTAX program is designed to foster interest among students in the world of tax and provide them with exposure to real-world tax cases. The xTAX teams have two weeks to research an assigned question about an important tax issue. Teams must consider multiple stakeholder viewpoints, collect information about alternatives and select a course of action to solve a problem and prepare a presentation that will convince expert judges to agree with them.

The MSU team, which called itself Vastarian Solution, received $1,000 to be split among the five students. A $500 prize was given to xTAX advisers, Anne Christensen and Dennis Schmidt, both MSU accounting professors. The team will now be considered as one of five teams selected for a $10,000 award and a trip to Washington, D.C. for the national finals.